The Environment

Environmental Sustainability

The environmental dimension of MTN's sustainability relates to our impact on living and non-living natural systems, including ecosystems, land, air and water. Environmentally, the telecommunications sector is typically classified as being of medium impact.

MTN has made significant strides in recent years to standardise processes across its operations to ensure impacts on the natural environment are managed effectively. Environmental performance across the group is in line with international industry standards, and we strive to continually improve our performance.

Diverse approaches have been adopted to ensure environmental preservation and social development initiatives are identified and implemented in different countries of operation. Our goal is to minimise adverse environmental impacts, while increasing the potential for contributions to social and economic development within local business and communal contexts. We continually monitor and aim to improve our environmental performance to meet and exceed international industry standards.

Direct and indirect environmental impacts of our activities include those associated with rolling out and operating network infrastructure, as well as the more generic impacts of administering a large organisation. During 2008, we invested substantially in expanding and improving the quality of our network across our African and Middle Eastern footprint. The newer technologies being rolled out in our operations have a favourable impact on our environmental performance; new base station technology is operationally more energy efficient, and its ability to service more customers requires fewer base stations to be built in a specific area.

Infrastructure sharing

Infrastructure sharing has emerged as an effective way for mobile operators to leverage synergies to reduce duplication of resources, holding benefits in terms of reduced environmental impact as well as costs, both from a capital and operational expenditure perspective. During 2008, MTN continued to expand sharing of infrastructure in a number of operating countries, and will actively pursue opportunities for further infrastructure sharing during 2009.

The primary form of infrastructure sharing we engage in is the sharing of passive infrastructure and related costs, such as the physical tower, surrounding fences and power requirements of base stations. In Nigeria, MTN currently shares 350 of some 4 800 base station sites, with an additional 400 shared sites planned in 2009. In South Africa around 30% of our base station sites are shared sites. MTN also engages in transmission infrastructure sharing, notably in South Africa where we have partnered with other telecommunications operators to roll out around 5 000 km of fibre-optic cable.

It is important to note that infrastructure sharing is better suited to more mature mobile markets, where operators compete on products and services rather than on coverage. We anticipate that infrastructure sharing will become increasingly feasible in line with the maturation of the markets we operate in.

Our sustainability performance at a glance

Environmental performance - progress against targets

What we said we'd do	What we've achieved	What we need to improve
Expand the implementation of the Cura risk management system across MTN South Africa to track and manage environmental risks and incidents.	Cura risk management system expanded and is used to track safety and health incidents. The system generates statistical graphs that detail the percentage of safety and health incidents.	Increase Cura risk management system to track hours of disability as a consequence of injuries.
Achieve approval to increase environmental management resource capacity group-wide.	No dedicated environmental management resources were appointed in 2008.	Ensure environmental management concerns are included in the sustainability management team’s work and performance monitoring mandate.
Work with business units and other stakeholders to develop a more intensive programme in order to increase customer awareness of handset recycling and the use of biodegradable cards.	There has been limited progress. Cellphone and battery recycling still limited to South Africa, where MTN is promoting awareness of the need to recycle cellphones by donating old handsets to charitable organisations or disposing of them through MTN outlets to ensure their disposal is responsibly managed. The group is exploring partnerships to expand recycling across all operations.	Operations will be engaged to expand recycling and greening initiatives across MTN’s operational footprint.
Increase environmental management resource capacity. Improve co-ordination of environmental management across the group.	No dedicated environmental management resources were appointed in 2008.	Environmental management concerns are included in the sustainability management team’s work.
Ensure that the EMF health and safety level site agreement implemented in South Africa is implemented across all operations.	The EMF site agreement, together with key environmental performance indicators, are included in the annual sustainability questionnaire.	Ensure the agreement is implemented across the group.